


hot buttered apples with chamomile tea

by syilca



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Fluff, High School AU, but it doesn't go too 'oof' with the sadness!, with a side platter of sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28101192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syilca/pseuds/syilca
Summary: [high school au]Link and Zelda ditch school on a tandem bike (that actually belongs to his sister) to go to the beach and he makes a bunch of good food for them to eat!
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	hot buttered apples with chamomile tea

**Author's Note:**

> Modern au where Link and Zelda bike ride to the beach and have a picnic! (prompt by the-astrumnauta on tumblr, ty again for it xoxo)
> 
> This was really fun to write, I hope you enjoy the read!!

There are two types of monsters: ones that sleep under your bed and ones that sleep behind your eyes. For Aryll, it's the former.

And Link saws a lot in the latter.

He rubbed his eyes to try to erase the bags that rest stubbornly underneath them, but he wondered if he was just making it worse. Probably. But why did it matter anyway? He usually got three hours of sleep tops, so he always liked to think that darkness had become a permanent edition to his features. He tapped his toes against the pavement, waiting, peering around the corner of the school's brick fence, trying to catch a glimpse of the black car that Zelda usually pulled up in. With five minutes left until school started, he was beginning to worry—she was never late. And for the first time in his entire high school career, he was early.

It was a last minute trip they had planned, when they had snuck onto the school roof after class yesterday.

"I want to see the ocean," she had told him, under the summer's unrelenting heat. They were both sticky with sweat, even though they were sitting under a shady area, and the next thing she said made no sense to him. "I've never been to the beach before." Living here and never _once_ going to Hateno Beach? He thought she was kidding at first. But she stared at him dead in the eye with her lips pressed into a thin line, as serious as ever. When he jokingly proposed that they ditch school the next day to go to the beach, she didn't hesitate to say yes.

It had taken him practically the whole _day_ yesterday to convince her to sneak up onto the rooftop, and yet she was completely fine with ditching an entire day of school to go to the beach.

She was weird and unpredictable and he loved it.

He decided to check his backpack again for the twelfth time in the past hour, just to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. His memory was pretty terrible to begin with. He always found something new that he had forgotten whenever he went to check his backpack. The first time he checked, he realized he didn't bring any cups. Just that one thermal bottle whose lid doubled as a cup. The second time he checked, he realized he had forgotten napkins. If worst came to worst, he guessed he could just offer up his jacket or something, if she really needed to clean her hands or wipe her mouth—would that be any better though? When was the last time he washed his jacket?

"Link?"

Before he could try to sniff his sleeve, Zelda's voice pierced his thoughts.

He zipped up the backpack once more and peeked around the corner again—and finally, he saw her familiar twin braided blonde hair bobbing up and down as she ran toward him.

With… a frenzied kind of pace.

"Link!" she shouted again, breathless, as she waved her arms up and down in panic. Behind her he could hear another person shouting—but it was hard to hear their voice, since it was drowned out by the sound of Zelda urgently telling him to _go, go, go_.

Fumbling, Link lifted the bike away from the brick fence and rolled it out, hopping onto the front seat.

"I thought you said you had _two_ bikes!" Zelda exclaimed, quickly tossing herself over the second seat without missing a beat.

"I mean, this is kinda like two bikes isn't it?" She only learned how to ride a bike three days ago and he wasn't comfortable with leading her down a rather windy road to get to the beach on her own. The last time he taught someone how to ride a bike was Mipha, years ago, and she almost face planted into a cliff because he let go of her bike and had forgotten to tell her how to brake.

Besides, he had to bribe Aryll _fifty_ rupees to take the tandem bike out today. If he wanted to borrow her regular bike, she would've asked for a _hundred_. That was equivalent to a week's worth of mowing Tokk's front lawn.

Link was probably getting scammed by Tokk, but he was only 40% sure about that.

"Won't we look ridiculous riding this around?" Zelda scoffed as they began pulling out onto the road. "I thought we were supposed to be discreet? A tandem bike—Oh Hylia!" She kicked his shin with her foot, urging him to hurry. "Impa's coming!"

"Who?" Impa? He didn't think Zelda had mentioned her before.

"Miss Zelda!"

Link glanced at the direction that Zelda had come from, and he saw an angry looking young woman in a black suit racing toward them at an alarming speed. A chill ran down his spine as they locked eyes.

 _"You!"_ Impa shouted, pointing a furious finger at him. "Who are you!"

Without a second left to waste, Link clicked into gear and pedaled away _fast_ before that angry finger could intentionally poke out his eyeballs. They shot down the road, with Zelda's exhilarated laughter mixing in with the sound of the rushing wind whistling by them.

For some reason, it was a strange and distinct sound, like it was reverberating all around him; he felt trapped in it.

Until her laughter abruptly stopped.

"Look out—!"

He looked up; but by then, it was too late. An apple that hung low from the tree smacked him square on the forehead with a resounding thud.

* * *

"You know," Zelda said, accepting his hand as he helped her down the rocky cliff that led to the shoreline, "the beach looks different from above."

Link hadn't been to Zelda's home before, but he knew what it looked like from below. It was an odd-looking building that used to be an abandoned lighthouse, but then someone moved into it a couple of years ago, and that someone had hammered on weird platforms and objects to it, so now it looked like Hateno's novelty sculpture.

"Your room's at the top of that lighthouse building right?" Link asked, grunting as he jumped down onto the sand with a hefty thud. He turned around and held out both of his hands to her.

"Mhm. Purah let me have the upper loft when I moved in with her. The view's amazing at night, you can see all the stars." Zelda crouched down and gratefully accepted his hands. Her hands were rough. She jumped down.

Link couldn't see the stars from his bed, because a gigantic tree was right in front of his window.

Her prickling stare withdrew him from his thoughts—she studied his face as if she was observing every detail on it. He could count the sun freckles that had begun appearing around her cheeks; heat climbed to his cheeks as he leaned back a little, finally aware of how close they were.

"I hope that apple won't leave a bruise on your forehead," she muttered, her eyebrows furrowing together, with that little crease appearing between her brows. Always one crease, never two. "You took quite a hit back there."

"I—" he paused, his mouth still slightly ajar.

What was he gonna say? That he was too focused on the sound of her laughter to the point where he wasn't paying attention to the road?

She tilted her head quizzically, waiting for him to speak.

Link let go of her hands to adjust the straps of his stiff backpack. "I know a spot near the rocks," he muttered, turning to a cluster of boulders near the water. It was flat enough that they could place the blanket down and set the lunchboxes and thermal bottle without having to worry about them falling over.

They walked side by side.

"The patterns on the rocks are so symmetrical," she murmured, tapping her chin with her finger. "Like the cliff we just climbed down from—you could tell during high tide the water reaches it, just barely though. I've always found it fascinating that exposure to water erosion could create such beautiful patterns. Don't you agree?"

Link nodded, and a smile quirked up on her lips. The hop in her step was a little higher than usual as she sped up to reach the cluster of rocks faster. He liked listening to her observations of little details, even though he didn't offer much opinion of his own. It was nice to hear and see Hyrule through a different kind of lens.

She was already climbing up the rock by the time Link reached it, and she stood there proud and tall with her hands on her hips, facing the vast ocean.

"We should eat before the food gets cold," Link called up to her, unzipping his backpack to hand her the picnic blanket. It used to belong to his mom. At one point he stole the key to his dad's chest and opened it up to find a bunch of things that used to be hers, probably, because there was a picture of her in there, squished in with a bunch of other stuff. He stole that picture too. And to this day, his dad still hadn't noticed anything was missing.

Link wondered if his dad knew, and just let him... have it.

"Of course," she said, her eyes glinting hungrily. She grabbed the blanket from him, and with it, his thoughts.

She spread it out as he climbed up to her.

Her reactions were always funny whenever Link brought food for her. For some reason, she always tried to mask her excitement—but she was terrible at hiding the anticipation that gleamed in her green eyes, and even more terrible at trying to keep a smile from erupting on her face while he pulled out the two lunchboxes.

"Chamomile tea," Link stated, as he pulled out the thermal bottle next. He paused to watch her, and her mouth formed an 'o' as she greedily grabbed it from him, opening the cap up. He popped open the lid of one of the lunchboxes and slid it toward her.

There were sliced hydromelons, egg pudding, honey crepes and fruits, and her favorite—

"Hot buttered apples!" Zelda exclaimed, reaching for one.

In the other box he had a handful of savory foods—maybe he should've opened that one up first.

"I'm glad you took my suggestion." Her fingers paused just before she picked the slice up. "But _first_ , the tea," she said quickly, as if she was reminding herself. She poured it into the lid of the thermal bottle, handing it to Link.

"I want to see your expression when you try it," Zelda insisted, beaming. She was smiling a lot today—more than she has in the past two years that he'd known her. "You take a bite out of the apple first, and then drink the tea, and then it tastes _amazing_."

"Just like that?" he asked, eyeing the light crisp color of the chamomile tea she handed to him. It reminded him of apple cider.

"Trust me, Link. You'll want to keep eating it," she promised, tugging down at her two braids. She always did that when she was waiting for something—every time she was standing in line at the vending machines to get the both of them candy pop sodas at school, she did that same little tug. "I'm picky with my food, so you know I wouldn't simply be saying this without meaning it."

Link picked up the slice—the hot buttered apples had turned into warm buttered apples by now, but he figured it wouldn't change the taste all that much. As soon as he took a bite out of it and took a sip from the tea, her eyes sparkled.

The combination of the two warmed his stomach—the pinch of cinnamon she had recommended he put on it really kicked it for him, and he had to refrain from shoving at least ten more into his mouth. Considering how much she was staring at the hot buttered apples, he wanted to save the majority of it for her.

"Good? Right? They both have that toasty taste but it's a _different_ kind of toasty. The chamomile tea, when brewed correctly of course, has that touch of floral kick to it too! And the hot buttered apples with that sprinkle of cinnamon just melts in your mouth and it's the most wonderful thing ever, isn't it?" She quickly thanked him as she accepted the tea when he handed it to her, and she picked up a slice to take an eager bite of her own.

"It's really good." He wasn't the best at expressing himself through words, but despite their simplicity, it seemed to have gotten through to her, as that gleeful glint in her eyes only gleamed brighter. "Did your parents—" He paused mid-chew, realizing just a little too late that his question was going to dampen her brightness.

And it did, just a little.

Idiot.

Whenever he asked about her immediate family, she would tense up—just like now. She cast her eyes down at the lunchbox, eyeing all of the food that he had prepared, her lips pursed. She would always be on the brink of telling him, but then she would turn away in the end.

Maybe… she needed a little push, to talk about it.

"My mom hated apples." The words felt weird in his mouth—he's never spoken about his mom to anyone, and he only brought her up once to his dad. Link raised his eyes to meet hers. Zelda had stopped chewing too, and looked at him with wide, curious eyes.

"That's what my dad told me at least, when I asked him what she hated the most." No one in his family ate apples that much, and it all made sense when he found out about that little fact a couple of years ago. It was hard for his dad to talk about her—time didn't heal the pain behind his voice when he told Link those three simple words: _She hated apples._

And behind those three simple words were years upon years of grieving, and he never asked his dad about her again.

He watched as Zelda picked up another slice, her mouth parting slightly. "My mother loved making all sorts of meals with apples."

 _Loved,_ Link thought.

Past tense.

They sat in silence for a bit, just munching on those hot buttered apples, while passing the tea back and forth between each other.

"My mother made a snack for me that always involved apples in some way—whenever I was sad, angry, or when she was proud of me." He expected her to look lost in thought as she spoke, but she wasn't. She was as present as she could've been, and he was... it made him feel a little better. Less alone. "Hot buttered apples with chamomile tea was my favorite. She made it for me quite often," she said, chuckling. "What was your mother like?"

She gave him the last slice.

He hesitated; both in accepting the last piece and at her question. The only thing he had was a worn out picture of her, weathered down by age. And that blanket. "I don't know, I don't remember anything," he admitted, taking the slice from her.

Her gaze softened.

Link once punched another classmate in grade school because they asked him, how could he be sad? If he had no memories of his own mom? What was there to be sad about, since he couldn't remember anything? And for the longest time, he didn't let himself be sad over her. How _could_ you be sad about someone you had no memories of?

But one day, Aryll barged into his room—her face red, with snot running down her nose, crying, because she had an argument with their dad. "What if I forget about her, Link?" Aryll had said to him in between her choked up sobs. "I feel like if dad never talks about her, she'll disappear forever."

He knew then that there was pain with memory, and pain without memory. One wasn't more valid than the other.

Because either way, no one won anything in the end.

"I wish I could've met your mother," she said. "I'm certain I could've changed her mind about apples."

There wasn't a lick of a tease on her face. She was serious.

For the first time in a while, Link laughed.


End file.
